CAN OUR CITIES SURVIVE?
AN ABC OF URBAN PROBLEMS, THEIR ANALYSIS,
THEIR SOLUTIONS
José Luís Sert and C.I.A.M. [International Congresses
for Modern Architecture]
José Luís Sert and C.I.A.M. [International Congresses for Modern Architecture]: CAN OUR CITIES SURVIVE? AN ABC OF URBAN PROBLEMS, THEIR ANALYSIS, THEIR SOLUTIONS [Based on the Proposals Formulated By the C.I.A.M. International Congress for Modern Architecture / Congre Internationaux d'Architecture Moderne]. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1942. First edition. Oblong quarto. Charcoal cloth titled in red. Printed photomontage dust jacket. 259 pp. One illustrated fold-out. Black and white illustrations throughout. Dust jacket, binding and book design/typography by Herbert Bayer. Cloth sunned along lower edges and a pair of small etched areas to front panel [see scan]. Foxing early and late with several pages with mild tacking, as usual for this heavily-inked volume. The rare Herbert Bayer photomontage dust jacket is essentially complete, but with mild soiling and chipping, and edge wear including several small closed tears. A good copy with a good example of the classic Herbert Bayer dust jacket.
12.5 x 9.25 hardcover book with 259 pages with more than 300 photographs, diagrams and illustrations, Index, and Introduction by Sigfried Giedion. An influential and seminal work on city planning CAN OUR CITIES SURVIVE? was published during the Second World War and was much cited in the rebuilding that took place in war's aftermath. The Book is based on the comprehensive proposals formulated by C.I.A.M. for town planning, including requirements of dwelling areas, recreation in cities, weekend/vacation recreation, workplaces, transportation, urban street systems, a total view of the city, and identifies the main barriers to large scale planning.
Includes work by Miguel Covarrubias, Pierre Jeanneret, Alvar Aalto, Arne Jacobsen, Oscar Storonov, Alfred Roth, Berenice Abbott, Walter Gropius, Werner Moser, Marcel Breuer FRS Yorke, Le Corbusier, John Held, Willem Van Tijen, Mart Stam and many other.
The International Congress of Modern Architecture (CIAM) was founded in June 1928, at the Chateau de la Sarraz in Switzerland, by a group of 28 European architects organized by Le Corbusier, Hélène de Mandrot (owner of the castle), and Sigfried Giedion (the first secretary-general). CIAM was one of many 20th century manifestos meant to advance the cause of "architecture as a social art".
Other founder members included Karl Moser (first president), Victor Bourgeois, Pierre Chareau, Josef Frank, Gabriel Guevrekian, Max Ernst Haefeli, Hugo Häring, Arnold Höchel, Huib Hoste, Pierre Jeanneret (cousin of Le Corbusier), André Lurçat, Ernst May, Fernando García Mercadal, Hannes Meyer, Werner Max Moser, Carlo Enrico Rava, Gerrit Rietveld, Alberto Sartoris, Hans Schmidt, Mart Stam, Rudolf Steiger, Henri-Robert Von der Mühll, and Juan de Zavala. The Soviet delegates were to be El Lissitzky, Nikolai Kolli and Moisei Ginzburg, although at the Sarraz conference they were unable to obtain visas. Other later members included Alvar Aalto and Hendrik Petrus Berlage. In 1931, Harwell Hamilton Harris was chosen as secretary of the American Group of CIAM.
The organization was hugely influential. It was not only engaged in formalising the architectural principles of the Modern Movement, but also saw architecture as an economic and political tool that could be used to improve the world through the design of buildings and through urban planning.
As CIAM members traveled world-wide after the war, many of its ideas spread outside Europe, notably to the USA. The city planning ideas were adopted in the rebuilding of Europe following World War II, although by then some CIAM members had their doubts. Alison and Peter Smithson were chief among the dissenters. When implemented in the postwar period, many of these ideas were compromised by tight financial constraints, poor understanding of the concepts, or popular resistance. Mart Stam's replanning of postwar Dresden in the CIAM formula was rejected by its citizens as an "all-out attack on the city."
José Luís Sert (1902 – 1983) played a leading role in defining urban design education and practice. He created the first professional degree program in urban design at Harvard in 1959 and shaped the profession through projects in the Boston area and beyond. He received a degree in architecture in 1929 from the Escuela Superior de Arquitectura in his native Barcelona. In the subsequent decade, he was among the leading young Spanish architects, active in both CIAM (International Congress for Modern Architecture) and GATEPAC (Grupo de Arquitectos y Técnicos Españoles para el Progreso de la Arquitectura Contemporánea). Sert gained an international reputation with his design for the Spanish Pavilion built for the 1937 International Exposition in Paris. Immigrating to the United States in 1941, he was from 1941 to 1958 a founding partner in Town Planning Associates, a design firm specializing in both architectural and urban design projects, with a particular focus on Latin America.
In 1958 Sert opened, with Huson Jackson and Ronald Gourley, Sert, Jackson & Gourley in Cambridge, Massachusetts; the firm's work included private residences, museums, and numerous large-scale commercial and educational commissions in the United States and abroad. The firm produced several buildings for Harvard University, including the Science Center, Holyoke Center, and Peabody Terrace. Sert served as Dean of Harvard's Graduate School of Design from 1953 until 1969. During his extraordinarily vibrant and productive tenure, he oversaw a variety of innovations in the curriculum, including the establishment of the first formal professional degree program in Urban Design.
"During the 1950s and 60s, urban design came to represent the physical shaping of cities through localized interventions rather than sweeping master proposals, and was increasingly characterized by the collaboration of professionals from a range of design backgrounds, and the arts," says Mary Daniels, Librarian, Special Collections, Harvard Design School. "Sert was instrumental in bringing together architects, landscape architects, and planners to engage in the formation of the city. Through his teaching and practice, he fostered the integration of the design disciplines at all scales of the urban framework, and the creation of new 'hearts of the city' that would become unique centers of collective vitality."
Herbert Bayer (1900 – 1985) is one of the individuals most closely identified with the famous Bauhaus program in Weimar, Germany. Together with Walter Gropius, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, and Wassily Kandinsky, Bayer helped shape a philosophy of functional design that extended across disciplines ranging from architecture to typography and graphic design. Endowed with enormous talent and energy, Bayer went on to produce an impressive body of work, including freelance graphics commissions, Modernist exhibition design, corporate identity programs, and architecture and environmental design.
He was born in Haag, Austria, and apprenticed in a local architectural design and graphic arts studio. By 1920 he was in Germany and a year later enrolled in a recently established, state-funded school of design called the Bauhaus. Then located in Weimar, the Bauhaus came to represent an almost utopian ideal that "modern art and architecture must be responsive to the needs and influence of the modern industrial world and that good designs must pass the test of both aesthetic standards and sound engineering."
Though Bayer came to the Bauhaus as a student, he stayed on to become one of its most prominent faculty members. His design for a new Sans-serif type called Universal helped to define the Bauhaus aesthetic.
He left in 1928 and moved to Berlin where he opened a graphic design firm whose clients included the trend-setting magazine Vogue. During this period, he also created or art-directed a number of memorable exhibitions. As with other designers of his generation, Bayer became alarmed over the increasingly repressive political situation in Germany and finally left in 1938 for New York. Within a short period of time, he was well-established as a designer and, among other achievements, had organized a comprehensive exhibition at MoMA on the early Bauhaus years. He also formed important connections with the publishers of Life and Fortune magazines, General Electric, and Container Corporation of America. CCA's chief executive, Walter Paepcke, became an important patron of Bayer's in the years to come, beginning with an invitation to move to Aspen, Colorado, to become a design consultant for the company. Bayer also supervised the architectural design of the new Aspen Institute, and then many of its program graphics. Bayer remained in Aspen until 1974, when he moved to California. There he worked on various environmental projects until his death in 1985.